{"id":196,"date":"2005-04-22T01:45:09","date_gmt":"2005-04-22T01:45:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/silverjacket.com\/blog\/uncategorized\/vanity_plates_a\/"},"modified":"2005-04-22T01:45:09","modified_gmt":"2005-04-22T01:45:09","slug":"vanity_plates_a","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/silverjacket.com\/blog\/language\/vanity_plates_a\/","title":{"rendered":"Vanity Plates at Fermilab"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a onclick=\"window.open(this.href, '_blank', 'width=426,height=407,scrollbars=no,resizable=no,toolbar=no,directories=no,location=no,menubar=no,status=no,left=0,top=0'); return false\" href=\"http:\/\/silverjacket.typepad.com\/.shared\/image.html?\/photos\/uncategorized\/cquark_1.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"100\" height=\"95\" border=\"0\" src=\"https:\/\/silverjacket.typepad.com\/blog\/images\/cquark_1.jpg\" title=\"Cquark_1\" alt=\"Cquark_1\" style=\"margin: 0px 5px 5px 0px; float: left;\" \/><\/a>The <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.fnal.gov\/\">Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory<\/a>, outside of Chicago, is home to the most powerful particle accelerator in the world. One of its biggest successes was the discovery of the last of the six quarks, the top quark, in 1995. (They also discovered the bottom quark in 1977.)<\/p>\n<p>When I worked at Fermilab (03-04) I did a fairly comprehensive survey of physics-related vanity plates among the staff and users. The number of ways people referenced \u201cquark\u201d on their plates approached the number of ways <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.google.com\/jobs\/britney.html\">people spell \u201cBritney Spears\u201d in Google<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Physicist Michael Tartaglia has owned \u201cDO TOP 1\u201d since he came to the lab in 1990. \u201cI thought it would globally advertise Fermilab\u2019s mission to study the top quark, and locally advertise my affiliation with DZero [one of the particle detectors],\u201d he said.&nbsp; (He no longer works with DZero, but the ring in \u201cDO\u201d doubles as a letter <em>O<\/em>, making &quot;DO&quot; a verb.)<\/p>\n<p>Particle physicist Rajendran Raja has had \u201cTP QUARK\u201d since 1995, the year of the discovery. \u201cI was the top quark convener in DZero from 1990-1994 and felt proud of the achievement of the whole collaboration,\u201d he told me.<\/p>\n<p>Particle physicist Harry Cheung got \u201cCQUARK 1\u201d in 1997.&nbsp; He works on an experiment called FOCUS, where they study the charm quark, \u201cthough it could stand for \u2018See Quark 1,\u2019\u201d he said.&nbsp; \u201cCQUARK\u201d was not taken, but adding the 1 actually reduces the licensing fee.<\/p>\n<p>Oh, the equivocating.&nbsp; Theorist Zach Sullivan kept it simple: \u201cQUARK.\u201d&nbsp; When he picked it up around 10 years ago, the people at the registry apologized for misspelling \u201cquirk.\u201d&nbsp; But at Fermilab, there can be no misunderstanding.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, outside of Chicago, is home to the most powerful particle accelerator in the world. One of its biggest successes was the discovery of the last of the six quarks, the top quark, in 1995. (They also discovered the bottom quark in 1977.) When I worked at Fermilab (03-04) I did [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,40],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-196","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-language","category-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/silverjacket.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/silverjacket.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/silverjacket.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/silverjacket.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/silverjacket.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=196"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/silverjacket.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/silverjacket.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=196"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/silverjacket.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=196"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/silverjacket.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=196"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}